The new shogun’s most important task is shaping the public’s understanding of Tokugawa history
Mr Tokugawa, who took over from his father last month in the dynasty’s first succession for over half a century, cuts an incongruous figure at the head of a family perhaps best known for barring its subjects from travelling abroad. He is a consummate internationalist, who grew up partly in New York and completed master’s degrees at the University of Michigan and Columbia University. He is a prolific translator of books, from tomes on China to polemics by George Soros.
The first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu, came to power amid civil wars. He and his successors introduced a strict class structure and a complex system of internal control that sidelined the emperor and kept the peace between Japan’s many, or local lords. But by the time Matthew Perry sailed America’s black ships into Japanese ports in 1853, lower-ranking samurai and commoners were bristling at their lack of opportunity.
To Mr Tokugawa, many of these ideas reek of myth. Contemporary historians challenge the notion that the Tokugawa period was entirely closed . A brisk trade continued with Chinese and Koreans and also Dutch merchants stationed in Nagasaki. “Japan was controlling traffic,” Mr Tokugawa says, “but we didn’t cover our eyes, or our ears, like the monkeys of Nikko,” referring to a famous carving at the temple where Ieyasu is entombed.
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